


Inheritance

by Missy



Category: Laverne & Shirley (TV)
Genre: Baby Fic, F/M, Grandparents & Grandchildren, Parenthood, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:02:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23276788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: Frank DeFazio always wanted a grandson.Instead, he gets six granddaughters.
Relationships: Laverne DeFazio/Lenny Kosnowski
Comments: 5
Kudos: 9





	1. Jo

Lenny Kosnowski pressed his forehead against the plate glass of the viewing window. Before him – and before Frank – were rows of babies in bassinettes, all of them pudgy, a rainbow of lovely but nondescript – looking bundles of innocence. 

When a nurse appeared and held up a swaddled pink bundle – the important one, the one that belonged to them - Lenny pressed his whole face into the glass, craning his neck to get a better look. From Frank’s vantage point he could see pudgy features – baby blue eyes open to a slit, tiny, chubby fists striking out and shadowboxing. 

“She’s so small,” Lenny said at last. Then he shot Frank a quick look of confusion. “Is she supposed to be that small?”

“She didn’t feel small coming out,” Laverne offered, coming up behind them both. Frank watched her go to Lenny’s side and wrap an arm around his middle; he automatically pulled her protectively to his side, and Frank felt a little left out of the equation. She gave Frank a weak smile, and he took her hand, thought she looked grown-up in her hospital chic – her robe, a green football jersey, and her bunny slippers, hair tied up in a messy ponytail. So much like her mother. 

God, what he’d give to have Josephine there, to hold on to him and marvel at the little girl on the other side of the glass.

“Are you okay, Muffin?” he asked. 

“Yeah, are you supposed to be out of bed?” Lenny asked, in a much more frantic tone.

Laverne nodded. “Yeah. The nurse said it’s safe to walk around, and I should, so I don’t get clots.”

“Oh,” Lenny said, squeezing her harder, imagining, Frank knew – as Frank had himself – what that could mean.

“Don’t be a dope,” she teased Lenny, kissing his cheek. “Why were you worried about her being small?”

“She just looked a little tiny, that’s all,” Lenny said. “Was Laverne that size when she was born, Mr. DeFazio?”

Lenny had been married to his daughter for two years and yet Lenny still didn’t have the courage to address Frank by his first name. “When you were born,” said Frank to Laverne, “I could carry you in one arm.”

“Yeah, you said I slept in your bedroom drawer,” Laverne said.

“Wow. That sounds downright eloquent,” Lenny said. “My mom…left me on an ironing board.” He shrugged. “At least she didn’t leave the iron on when she did it. Most of the time…”

Laverne automatically squeezed Lenny’s shoulder. The look he gave her in return was filled with open adoration. Frank knew that he’d been giving Laverne those stares of his ever since he was a little boy hanging around their apartment begging Laverne to come out to play with him. Laverne had only started returning them over the past few years, but Frank didn’t doubt his daughter’s sincerity.

“Pop? You ain’t mad she’s a girl?” Laverne asked.

How long had he been drumming his need for a grandson into her head to get a question like that from her on such a happy day? “Why? It ain’t like you could help it!” Frank said. “I’ve got a lot of sweet girls in my life. One more ain’t gonna hurt nothing.”

Her smile was wide and beautiful as she lurched toward him, wrapping her arms around his neck for a quick hug.

“We’re thinking of calling her Josephine,” said Lenny, as he watched them. 

Frank saw tears in the corner of Lenny’s eye, making them shine, eerily blue in the low lights of the hospital. “That’d be wonderful,” he said, and kissed his daughter’s forehead.

The first time Frank held Jo – for Jo she would always be within the family – she stared up at him with her little, defiant blue eyes and gave him a punch in the wrist. The first of a few. For she was a tough little thing. A DeFazio through and through.


	2. Carrie

The day Jo broke the front parlor window or her grandfather’s new apartment with her baseball was the day her mother went into labor. The two incidents were not related, to her grandfather’s relief, but they might as well have been. 

“Now I’m gonna show you how to board a window up,” he said, as Jo sat there pouting on the living room sofa while he pounded board over the 

“I didn’t mean to, _nonno,_ ” she said, and Frank, as always, knew she truly hadn’t, but it was better for the girl to learn how to fix her mistakes. She was four and already had a throwing arm like her mother, which meant that everything breakable in his or her parent’s (and probably her aunt Shirley’s) place would be in danger for weeks.

“Hey, I know you didn’t, all right?” he said. “But that’s why we throw the ball outside, all right?”

She nodded her head, her stick-straight dark blond hair brushing her shoulders as she did so. She was a good girl – fiery like her mother, but with a sense of focus that was her own. She helped him get the nails and the hammer and watched him slam them into the wood, until the wind couldn’t blow threw. It was Saturday – he’d call a glass guy he knew and have it replaced early in the week.

“That better?”

She bobbed her head eagerly. 

“Okay, honey,” he sighed. “I’ll get you some milk and we’ll have cookies and wait for your dad.” 

She hugged him eagerly and bounced away into the kitchen. Frank doddered behind, feeling ancient for a moment. He and Jo were a team, a couple of pals. When her parents had to work late, she spent time at the Pizza Bowl, and she knew how to fill a salt shaker and refill a straw dispenser, not bad for a young kid. He could teach her how to run the restaurant down the line- give it to her, since her mother was being stubborn about accepting her legacy.

They were halfway through with the cookies when the phone rang. Lenny’s voice was shaky on the other end of the line. “Frank?”

That had to be serious, because he was never Frank to Lenny. “What’s going on?”

“Laverne’s having the baby.”

“Now?”

“Not now now, but soon now!” 

Frank – whose instinct was to yell at Lenny, because that was his base instinct in general – managed to speak softly with Jo in the room. “So why aren’t you with her?”

“I can’t be!” he yelled. “They kicked me out! They said they might have to cut her open if they can’t get the baby to turn around. I didn’t even know how…”

“Calm down!” Frank said, just sharply enough to cut him off mid-rant. He could hear Lenny’s breath sawing in and out of his lungs, knew that sound well enough from his childhood crying jags. “She’s with people who can help her. YOU ain’t helping by getting upset.”

“Okay,” Lenny said thickly.

“Okay,” Frank said carefully. “I take care of Jo. You take care of Laverne and stay out of the doctor’s way. We meet up when it’s over, capiche?”

“Yes, sir,” Lenny mumbled. 

When he hung up he turned toward Jo to find her chugging down her milk and was so startled by her resemblance to Laverne he had to hold in a breath. “Ok, little Peanut,” Frank said kindly as he could. “Let’s go to the movies!”

He knew he was rewarding her for bad behavior, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

*** 

Lenny came to the front door sometime past midnight, with Jo asleep on the couch and Frank keeping his temper at a low boil.

“We have another little girl,” Lenny said, and sat down on the arm of Frank’s couch, shrinking down, his face in his hands.

“How’s Laverne?”

“Okay,” Lenny said. “She was out of it when we talked but they said that’s supposed to happen.” Lenny’s eyes were glossy with tears as he sat back. “Worst day of my life, Mr. DeFazio. I shouldn’t say that about my kid…”

“I know,” Frank said. “We ain’t gonna hold it against her.”

Together the two men sat, until Lenny was calm enough to drive his daughter back home.

The new baby – who would grow up to be Caroline, called “Carrie”, after Lenny’s big sister - would be the one Frank would always worry about, heedless. But he didn’t know that, as he watched Lenny walk away with Jo in his arms. He only felt gratefulness. Another disaster had been averted.


	3. Theresa

“Why is the sky blue, _nonno?_.” 

“Waddya mean, why’s the sky blue?” Frank asked. He had Carrie in his arms as Jo strode beside him, asking him about the neighborhood. She was a terribly bright five year old, fierce on top of it all. “How should I know?”

“You know everything,” she said firmly. But Jo was at that age where every adult knew more than her and thus must be wisely obeyed. She thought Lenny hung the moon and believed everything that came out of his mouth, even when half of the things he came out with were gently confused natterings. 

“Yeah, well, this I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe we’ll go to the library and look it up, huh?” 

“Okay!” she said. And while they were looking over the old globes and ancient books, Frank wondered how long he could keep the kids entertained before heading to the hospital. 

Laverne had been in labor for three days. Whoever told him each kid got easier for a woman had lied through their teeth at him, though he had to admit this was better than a crash C-section. To Lenny’s credit he’d been there every single second, holding her hand, coming to the phone to call Frank in the meantime. But it also left him once more out of the loop with the kids.

“How big is the universe?” Jo asked, after they checked out three thick books for kids just a little bit older than her – ones about science and other things he couldn’t quite grasp.

“As big as the universe,” Frank said. To be honest, he doesn’t exactly know how big it is. She asks Shirley when they get back to Frank’s apartment, and the younger woman has a single concrete answer as she holds on to Carrie. 

“As big as a leaf,” she said. Frank raised an eyebrow. He’s been a little worried about her ever since she came back to California, minus Walter and plus a baby, with a whole head filled with Eastern Mysticism that had confounded the entire household.

Shirley, at least, was willing to watch the kids, which meant that Frank could go to the hospital. He found Lenny in the little waiting room outside of the maternity ward.

“They’re going to induce her,” Lenny said. “Kinda strange – we already know her doctor,” he said.

“That don’t mean what you think it means,” Frank said.

“Oh,” Lenny said. He looked exhausted and Frank could feel said exhaustion seeping into his own bones. But the process was quicker from that point on. 

The third daughter, born at two in the morning, was a fountain of joy – bubbly and laughing. Lenny and Laverne eventually selected the name Theresa for her, after her saint day, after the long fortnight they had suffered together. 

And Laverne – well, she was exhausted but happy. She demanded updates immediately from her father – on Jo, on Carrie. She wanted to know what she’d missed out on, the names of all of the books Jo had taken out.

Well, how big _was_ their universe? (Theresa would try to figure that out; someday she’d become a scientist).

Frank asked Laverne what she really wanted. She shrugged her shoulders.

“A hoagie and some Milk and Pepsi.”

Lenny wasn’t the only one who’d do anything she asked him to. 

Both arrived in her room before the sun rose.


	4. Mary

“Honestly, Laverne. At this point you’re birthing a litter,” Shirley observed.

“Pipe down, Shirl,” Laverne replied, rubbing her back. She sat down in the kitchen chair with a grunt and tried to fix her blouse, pulling it down over the round of her stomach with a sigh. “We didn’t plan on it.”

“More like Lenny didn’t plan on it,” Shirley retorted. She dandled Theresa on her knee while keeping her eye on Carrie and Jo in the other room. Laverne snorted.

“Hey, they’re two years apart. That’s normal,” Laverne said. “And it takes two to tango.” 

Shirley sighed. “I know, but you did promise to stop at three lone wolves.”

“Yeah, but don’t wolves run in packs?” Laverne grinned.

“Well,” Shirley said.

Frank knocked louder and coughed. 

“Don’t blame Lenny for everything,” Laverne replied, then opened the door. “I’m the one who jumped him and…” A much, much heavier knock and her wide eyes swung toward the screened in fire escape door. “Hi, Pop. You and Shirl’re gonna double up for this one, right?”

“Right,” he said. “Can you drive yourself?”

“Sure. Y’know they won’t induce me ‘til I get there. Len said he’d meet me at the hospital when he gets off of work.” She kissed the top of his head. “I’ll see you later, Pop. We’ll call when it’s over.”

Frank watched her leave before turning his attention to Shirley. “Okay, we gotta get these kids fed.”

As they bustled around the kitchen, Frank continued to worry about his quasi-daughter. Shirley and Carmine were going through yet another rough patch and they had been talking about a break-up with louder and louder voices and with a greater frequency. It was more information Frank wished he wasn’t privy to but happened to have knowledge of because of a series of very loud arguments conducted at the Pizza Bowl between them. He wondered if she will finally cut the boy loose. As much as frank loves Carmine, he’s painfully aware of his shortfalls as a boyfriend.

He made spaghetti and Shirley dressed salad. Jo sullenly ate the meal, while Carrie asked cheerful questions between bouts of silence. Frank eyeballed his churning urn of angst that was Jo Kosnowski. He adored the girl but worried about all of them constantly. They had their parent’s passion and lack of self-preservation in equal measures, and sometimes it was hard for Frank to relate to the two of them.

Washing dishes, he told Shirley as much. She laughed.

“They’re Laverne and Lenny’s kids. They’re never going to be understandable.”

That was true. In fact it was expected. Frank didn’t know why he’d fought the notion in the first place.

In the end, the birth of Mary was simple - an induced affair that had taken what felt like forever in Frank’s opinion and yet sped by in an ordinated period that made him feel as if it had taken just seconds. Mary would be like this – neatly ordered, practical. She would be the only kid of theirs to make it to the nunnery. A first for the DeFazio clan.

Carmine and Shirley would work out their little problem as well – but that would happen another day.


	5. Vittoria

“Why don’t people throw divorce parties?” Jo asked. She had been writing out a school assignment when Frank started at her sudden question.

“Because being divorced ain’t no party.” He knew that personally now. For just a minute he wondered where Edna was, what she was doing, and let out a regret-filled sigh. 

Jo was all of eight years old now, and she let out a little sigh and patted his hand. “You’ve gotta get over it, Pop-Pop,” she said. 

“You got a fresh mouth,” he grumbled.

“Only sometimes,” said Jo. “My teachers say that means I’m a firebrand! I don’t know what that means.”

“It’s fancy for pain in the keister,” said Laverne – but she patted her daughter’s hair, gently parting the sticky, straight strands. Frank’s daughter was wearing a peasant dress with sandals, and she let out a hearty sigh as she dumped her purse on the end table. “Carrie’s not allowed to be near any of the boys for the next few weeks, but she’s fine,” Laverne said. Carrie stomped in, all overbite and flashing blue eyes, her glower nearly enough to make Frank laugh aloud.

“Good,” said Frank, though he wondered what on earth the girl could have done to get so much time in the kindergarten version of the clink. 

“You go upstairs and do your homework,” she told Carrie, but the girl defiantly sat on the sofa and dumped her workbook out, then went about preparing her lessons. Jo rolled her eyes and joined her sister, mixing in Carrie’s little colored in circles with Jo’s math problems and undiagramed sentences.

For that, Laverne didn’t shout at them. Instead she sat down heavily in the chair and patted her round stomach. “Remind me why I had four of those,” she said, which earned her a glower from Carrie and a roll of the eyes from Jo.

“Five,” her father reminded her.

“It’s not a baby ‘til it’s out.” Before they could get into another verbal political brawl, she said, “three more days and this one’s done, the doc said.”

“And you’re gonna stop at five?”

“Yeah,” Laverne said with a grunt. “We’re lucky I got that promotion a couple of years ago. Me and Len wouldn’t be able to afford the delivery otherwise.” She sat back with a sigh. “Pop, did you ever wish you had more than one kid?”

“All the time,” he said. That seemed to surprise her.

“So you’d have the son you always wanted?” she asked in a tiny voice.

“No,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze. “Because I want someone else in my life who’s just like you.”

“Aww.” She hugged him, quick and hard. Frank held her until the baby rolled over, kicking its protest at the sudden pressure. “Hey,” he said to her belly. “Be patient!” In total defiance of his request, Laverne grunted and brushed a hand over her stomach.

“Brachson Hicks?” asked her father.

“Braxton,” Laverne said. “And I dunno, it’s been coming and going all day.” She rubbed her lower back. A sudden flood of wetness and a widening of her eyes told her the truth. “Not a false alarm,” she said. 

Frank clapped his hands. “All right! Everyone out of the room!” He shepherded the girls upstairs. The younger ones were across town with Shirley, working on wedding tasks, so there was a smaller number of witnesses to Laverne’s misery than there normally might be.

“Pop!” he could hear Laverne calling in the background, seeing her fingertips clutch the end of the banister desperately. She still sounded frantic, teary, like she did when she skinned her knee as a little girl. She was a thirty year old woman, now, but part of her was still a girl. Frank understood that, truly did, but as he listened for the ambulance he realized he’d have to take control of the chaos.

“Go upstairs and keep your sisters busy,” he said. Jo nodded, and dragged Caroline upstairs, the former complaining the whole way, the latter dragging her book.

“Get your coat. I’ll have Lenny bring the suitcase,” said Frank. Laverne managed to walk-waddle her way to his car while Frank got Laverne’s nextdoor neighbor to watch the girls. Shirley would take over when she came back with the younger girls.

Frank broke several speed records getting to the hospital, but he made it. Lenny – who found out after a shrieking call from Shirley what had happened – nearly broke his neck getting there. He didn’t make it on time to see Vittoria make it into the world, but he was there afterwards. 

Vittoria –athletic, brilliant, in her own way unlike the rest of the family - was born in a rush in an elevator while Frank signed papers in the lobby. A future lawyer, she barreled into the world without too much hesitation. As it was, it turned out, so it would ever be. 

Divorce, marriage and birth. Death would arrive soon enough. But not yet, Frank knew. Not yet.


	6. Frankie

“I’m getting my tubes tied after this one,” Laverne said. 

“Mom,” said Jo impassionedly, “that’s well within your right, but I don’t want to hear about it.”

Frank laughs from the passenger side seat. He’s been doing that more and more lately, to his own frustration, to his daughter’s concern. Strokes were no joke, and his had made life difficult and frustrating, but at least he could get around on his own power, spell his own name, cash his own checks. 

“I’m serious,” Laverne said. “Burning those ends and letting it go!” Jo groaned. She was an impassioned feminist at fourteen and normally would have supported her mother’s gesture toward independence with all of her might, but she didn’t want to hear about people having sex. Ever. And that was fine, considering how boy-crazy Carrie was at twelve.

“Don’t I get a vote?” Lenny had his mouth full – he always had his mouth full, it seemed, to Frank – and Vittoria was on his lap as he passed her a wand of cotton candy.

Laverne reached over the back seat of the Sedan and stroked her husband’s cheek after taking the candy, before giving him a love tap. “No!”

“Hey! Don’t slap me in front of the kids,” he said. Then he rolled his eyes and stuck out his tongue. Frank DeFazio feared nothing – including the notion of this man leaving his daughter someday – beyond what his latest therapy session might bring up.

They were headed out to a picnic, to the calm and cool of a public park. Jo had made sandwiches and Carrie had assisted sullenly. Mary, of course, had been on her best behavior, while Theresa had been full of questions. He knew that the day would be good, and the hours would be comfortably long. 

Lenny talked too much, but he hovered over Laverne, and his expression was so adoring that it made Frank laugh. And at the center of it all was Laverne, beautiful, sweet Laverne. Ahh, to be that filled with easy affection; to know what he knew without having to run from it! 

He moved slowly to hold a cup, to dip a fork, to smile at his daughter, but he still could. He absolutely still could. And that in of itself was a miracle.

In his sleep, he would fall away, into the next life, the next world. His sixth and final granddaughter was born the next week. 

They named her Frankie, and she would own a restaurant.


End file.
